Unity

We are deluded that we travel from somewhere to somewhere, across time and space, but the truth is that we have always been and always will be – everywhere. We are the rain, and the cloud it comes from, and the earth that soaks it up. There is no you and I; we are the...

The art of giving up

Sometimes we want something so much that we’re ready to pay an extremely high price for it and then, once we get that something, instead of being satisfied we feel bitter, because we realise that it was a rip-off. That’s why it’s important to set up a limit to the price we’re willing to pay...

Puzzling

I look at some of my married friends and it seems like they got married because of something that I’d call a puzzle-piece vision. They took a random puzzle piece out of a box and there was a picture of family happiness on it so they enthusiastically bought the whole box, but then, over the...

Unsettled

‘Don’t throw your Britishness at me,’ a work colleague told me.  It was meant in a tongue-in-the-cheek way, and I took no offence, but the remark left me as confused as I was amused. Do I really come across as British? I wondered. That led us to an interesting conversation about identity, and how it...

The chocolate box

I used to believe that my life was a bottomless chocolate box, and my only worry was that one day I’d die having eaten just halfway through all the delicious layers neatly stacked inside. Was I wrong? For some time now, every single chocolate I’ve picked up from the box turns out to be mouldy,...

The questions that I leave unanswered

I post a picture of the sunrise on Instagram and hashtag the location. Almost immediately I get a series of messages from A., someone who has never been more than a casual acquaintance, probing into my whereabouts with a series of increasingly invasive questions, undeterred by my lack of response. It’s the first time I’ve...

East, West

Europe and Asia nestle in my heart next to each other and wherever I am, I’m forever condemned to missing the place where I’m not.  I’m going to bid farewell to the summer of my life in Asia, and I hope to spend my autumn in Europe.  May the weather be golden.

Counting sheep

On the days when I’m not writing I get anxious that I’ve lost my command of language, that next time I try words will fail me. After reading millions of words written by other people, my own always seem inept, squeezed in my brain like sheep in a pen, baaing for attention, but when I...

Belongings

Years of travelling have changed my relationship with the things I own. My predilection for fancy mugs, arty trinkets, and chunky boots has stayed the same, but I’ve started to notice the importance of the settings in which the things are used.  The fanciest of mugs turns into just another piece of junk if I...

Not now, not yet

What I do at work most of the day, every day, is engage in a caricatural form of communication that consists in passing on bits of information to various people through various channels, incessantly, and at a great speed. If I blinked, I’d fall behind. I don’t care about the people I communicate with, nor...